Archive for June 13th, 2011

Alternate title: The One In Which I Suggest We Change Our Blog Name to “Illegal Dumping”

For anyone who follows us on Facebook, you might have seen me talk a bit about the “weird concrete” in our backyard.

weird concrete in all its glory awkwardness

When Robert got home from work on Saturday we (meaning he) took a sledgehammer to the weird concrete and I loaded the pieces into the back of the truck. (Fun fact: When we put up our fence we didn’t plan on it, but his Ranger justbarely fits through the gate into the backyard. Granted it then got covered in some sort of sticky nastiness that dripped off our weed-trees, but it washed off ok.) My hamstrings (and I’m assuming Robert’s back and shoulders) want you to know that this process did not go as easily as I would lead you to believe on Facebook.

Saturday’s status updateSunday’s status update

Sunday morning we resumed the process of trying to break the last three or so feet of concrete out. Forty minutes or so later we said “screw it” and decided to brainstorm while dumping the concrete we had already broken out. (I owe you pictures of that truck-load, I just haven’t pulled them off the memory card yet. Whoops.) While we were tossing our concrete into a dumpster (with the manager’s permission if you want to get technical, though he wasn’t working this time) I joked that we should change out blog name to “Illegal Dumping”.

To wrap things up, the first 22-24 feet of concrete busted out fairly easily because whoever put it down had no idea what they were doing. What we thought was rebar was actually just a couple of long bolts (which we’re guessing were connected to supports for a deck, maybe?) The last bit, the part Robert hammered on for 40 minutes and only managed to chip tiny pieces off of, is an L-shaped area where the long side of the L is the horizontal part in the foreground of the picture above. The concrete there was much thicker, as if they had a lot left over so they just dug deeper and dumped the rest in that area.

We’re thinking about renting a jackhammer for that last part (though Robert just texted me saying he’s still brainstorming other ideas). It’s about $200 cheaper than renting a saw would have been, and it should also help with chiseling up the tile. At the moment our plan for the tiled area is to square it off with (groan) more concrete and then re-tile the area using some terra cotta tiles we scored from the shed on some family property. In theroy it should coordinate well with the brick patio, cross your fingers for us!

Anyone else do anything house projects that left them sore this Monday morning?